Needless to say - well, maybe not needless - I found the first few years of the new dark, gritty CapaldiDoc to be utterly anathema to my delicate sensibilities. Since one of my cohorts Johan "No Nickname, But I've Got a Flintlock" Redsen couldn't be arsed to watch it and I couldn't in all integrity tell him to, I had the idea of writing a handy dandy guide to the years of Doctor Who like-minded people might not be prepared to sit through. Yes, I am aware I have too much time on my hands. Well spotted.
Anyway, reprinted exclusively below is one of the entries...
THE CARETAKER
Writer: Gareth Roberts and Steven Moffat
Director: Paul Murphy
Guest Stars: Edward Harrison (Matt Smith cosplayer), Andy Gillies (copper that gets nuked), Nanya Campbell, Joshua Warner-Campell, Oliver Barry-Brook, Ramone Morgan (trouble-making black kids), Winston Ellis and Gracy Goldman (lax black parents), Molly Griffiths (wholesome white girl), Diana Katis (wholesome white girl’s hardworking mother), Enoch Powell (Ali G).
Tagline: A girl, a boy, a robot and an alien.
Opening Shot: A very-sunburnt and dehydrated-looking Doctor and Clara are chained to a matching pair of ornately-carved pillars in the middle of the desert with three shark-fin-like rocky outcrops in the horizon and twin suns beating out of the sky. But don’t get your hopes up, the rest of the episode is in a school.
You Just Summed Up the Plot:
Danny: He doesn’t seem like a caretaker.
You Just Summed Up the Episode:
Doctor: I never learn.
You Just Summed Up the Racial Intolerance Subtext:
Danny: You’re brown. You’re very brown.
In A Nutshell: Guess (Doctor) Who’s Coming To Dinner.
Story: The numerous to-ings and fro-ings of the TARDIS to Coal Hill School have drawn a robotic alien killing machine called a Skovox Blitzer to the area. The Doctor goes undercover as the school caretaker (well, he changes his jacket) and comes up with whacky schemes to lure the Blitzer into a trap – but gets sidetracked when he discovers Clara is dating ex-soldier Danny Pink and not that nice white guy with the floppy hair and the bowtie she also happens to work with. Hilarity fails to ensue.
Closing Shot: Seb pouts girlishly at the dead policeman in front of a backlit venetian blind.
This Week’s Insult:
Schoolboy: Miss, what about our homework?
Clara: Who asks for homework? Amateur.
This Week’s Failed Attempt to Intimidate:
Danny: How stupid do you think I am?
Doctor: I’m willing to put a number on it.
This Week’s Backhanded Compliment:
Clara: You are a very clever man making the mistake – common to very clever people – of assuming that everybody else is stupid.
This Week’s Bitchy Exchange:
Doctor: You best get back to your PE class.
Danny: Oh, I teach maths.
Doctor: Do you? What, in emergencies?
Danny: No. I’m a maths teacher.
Doctor: How does that work? What if the kids have questions?
Danny: I answer them. I’m a maths teacher.
Doctor: But he said you were a soldier.
Danny: Yeah. I was a soldier, now I’m a maths teacher.
Doctor: But what about all the PE?
Danny: I don’t teach PE. I’m not a PE teacher.
Doctor: Sorry, that seems very unlikely.
Clara: Er, excuse me. Mister Pink, I think class 9M4 are waiting.
Doctor: Yes, you better run along, Sergeant. That ball isn’t going to kick itself, is it?
Danny: I’m not a PE teacher, I’m a maths teacher.
Doctor: Nope, sorry. No, I can’t retain that. I’ve tried. It’s just not going in.
This Week’s Euphemisms:
Well, it seems to most viewers if you change the terms ‘soldier’, ‘PE teacher’, ‘Dave’ and ‘Maths teacher’ to ‘black’, ‘darkie’, ‘negro’ and ‘African American’ then the script… is fundamentally identical.
Doctor: I hate soldiers. Don’t you hate soldiers?
Doctor: Doesn’t look anything like him though.
Clara: Looks very like him.
Doctor: Does he? I don’t know. Who remembers a PE teacher?
Doctor: The world is full of PE teachers.
Doctor: But you’re a PE teacher. Clara wouldn’t go out with a PE teacher. It’s a mistake. She’s made a boyfriend error.
Danny: I am not a PE teacher. I am a maths teacher.
Doctor: You’re a soldier. Why would Clara go out with a soldier? Why not get a dog or a big plant?
Doctor: If you want bother someone, go and bother PE.
Clara: He’s a maths teacher.
Doctor: That’s a shame, I like maths.
Clara: Not a soldier.
And so on… sigh…
This Week’s Break-Up Speech:
Danny: If he ever pushes you too far, I want you to tell me, because I know what that’s like. You’ll tell me if that happens, yeah? It’s a promise and if you break that promise, Clara, we’re finished. If you don’t tell me the truth, I can’t help you. And I could never stand not being able to help you. We clear?
They’ve actually spent more time breaking up than being together. This is probably a bad omen.
This Week’s Massive Amount Of Syllables In One Line Said Very Quickly:
Skovox Blitzer: NINE-STOP-PARSING-DATA-PURSUE-INCOMING-IDENTIFIED-HELICON-COMMENCE-RETARGETING! DESTROY-DESTROY-DESTROY!!
This Week’s Cringe-Inducing Trailer Bait Dialogue:
Doctor: What’s the matter with kids today?
This Week’s Incomprehensible Line:
Adrian: What we have to get across, I feel, is that fascinating enigma of its not-finished-ness.
Clara: Mmm, yes, good point, Ade.
This Week’s Fantasy:
Clara: Where’s Atif? What have you done with him?
Doctor: Hypnotized. He thinks he’s got the flu. Also a flying car and three wives. It’s going to be a rude awakening.
‘Bigger On The Inside’ Moment:
Clara: It’s called a TARDIS, but it’s disguised as an old police phone box.
Doctor: (prompting) It’s bigger on the inside.
Clara: And it’s bigger on the inside than the outside!
‘What Are You Doing Here?’ Count: 5
‘It’s A Thing’ Count: 12
The Joan Redfern Test: If the Doctor had never visited us would anybody here have died?
No. The Doctor’s presence is precisely what draws the Skovox Blitzer to Coal Hill in the first place and thus he is responsible for anyone and anything it kills since its arrival.
This Week’s Celebrity Song:
Peter Capaldi whistles Pink Floyd’s Another Brick In The Wall. He was in a band once, you know.
Rhyme of the Week:
Doctor: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the most dangerous of them all?
Quotable Notable Dialogue:
Danny: They’re children. It’s like they’ve got minds of their own.
Clara: You can’t do this. You cannot pass yourself off as a real person among actual people.
Doctor: I lived among otters once for a month. Well, I sulked. River and I, we had this big fight…
Clara: Human beings are not otters!
Doctor: Exactly. It’ll be even easier.
Doctor: Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice in 1796 not in 1797, because she didn’t have the time. She was so busy doing all…
Clara: Oh, what? I suppose she was your bezzie mate, was she? And you went on holidays together and then you got kidnapped by Boggons from space and then you all formed a band and met Buddy Holly?
Doctor: No, I read the book. There’s a bio at the back. (long pause) ‘Boggons’?
Doctor: Why do I keep you around?
Clara: Because the alternative would be developing a conscience of your own.
Clara: So you’re, you’re leading the thing here? To a school? My school?
Doctor: “My school?” Oh, that is telling.
Doctor: Crocodilopolis. They worship a big crocodile there, so the name is a useful coincidence.
Clara: Are you going to start talking like a normal human being?
Doctor: I promise I won’t. I’m being nice.
Doctor: Can’t you read?
Courtney: Course I can read. Read what?
Doctor: The door. It says Keep Out.
Courtney: No, it says Go Away Humans.
Doctor: Oh, so it does. Never lose your temper in the middle of a door sign.
Doctor: Oh, oh, well done, PE, brilliant work. What’s this? A chronodyne generator? I’ll just deactivate that, shall I? I’ve got a swimming certificate so that qualifies me to meddle with higher technology. Never mind that some people are actually trying to save the planet. Oh, no. There’s only room in my head for cross-country and the offside rule!
Danny: I would say yes, I’m afraid Courtney is a disruptive influence.
Courtney’s Dad: Yeah, but last year you said she was a very disruptive influence.
Courtney’s Mum: So I suppose that counts as an improvement.
Danny: You’re using her like a decoy?
Doctor: No, not like a decoy. As a decoy. Don’t they teach you anything at stupid school?
Times Capaldi abandons Clara: twice, but at least he warns her this week.
Times Clara abandons Capaldi: once.
Sexy Clara: In the opening sequence Clara goes from deep tropical tan to wearing a clingy wet red dress to stripping down to her undergarments in front of her mirrors, flushed and panting and breathing oh so heavily, perspiration dripping off her overheated skin… oh god, Danny Pink is one lucky bastard!
Unacceptable Shoddiness:
There is some vaguely offensive racial overtones to this ep, but you might not have noticed them.
Technically, this entire episode should be named The Site Manager as ‘caretaker’ is considered by the profession an outdated and even offensive term. Well, it suits the general prejudiced vibe at least…
That taxi driver should have checked his rearview mirror before driving off, especially with Clara hurling Atlantean seaweed all over the back seat.
A new teacher appears in the staff room simply to join the queue leaving it.
Coal Hill School’s fire alarms repeatedly ignore what most people generally consider ‘a fire’.
Wikipedia agrees with Clara rather than the Doctor on the Jane Austen dating controversy.
Anyone who is fooled into thinking the Skovox Blitzer’s spider legs were actually moving it is legally entitled to free optical health care for the rest of their lives. Or a straightjacket. In the scene where it kills the community service officer, its feet clearly aren’t touching the ground.
Courtney’s paper towels only exist in certain camera angles.
The workbenches inside the TARDIS aren’t visible from the outside through the doors.
It’s charming naïve to think parents turn up for parent/teacher night at all, let alone the ones of the most notorious and disruptive student in the entire school.
TOMORROW’S HISTORY, FACTS AND FANCIES
Working Titles: An Unearthly Employee, The Used Rolex of Invisibility, Dr. Who & The Ungrateful Bint
The New Pertwee Era: the Doctor getting a boring mundane job which allows him to build gizmos to fight aliens, humans constantly interrupting/ruining his experiments for comic relief, the idea the companion would fall in love with a Doctor-lookalike, lots of mockery of the military as trigger-happy idiots who nonetheless end up saving the day with the very skills mocked about, the Doctor hypnotizing people and, oh, then the Master turns up. Again.
Well-Known Fact: This entire script was inspired by that bit in Remembrance of the Daleks where the Seventh Doctor is mistakenly as wanting the job of the caretaker at Coal Hill School. It’s worth mentioning because everyone just assumes the script was actually sponsored by UKIP.
Little-Known Fact: This episode spawned the internet meme P.C. Madness Is A Copper Who Gets Blown Up By The Blinkowitz Zapper. No, I don’t understand it either but at least it makes a change from all that stuff about grumpy cats and cheeseburgers.
Worth bearing in mind: On paper, before any of the actors get to it, the “PE teacher” exchange seems to have been about the Doctor first not paying attention to anything Danny says because he’s busy rewiring the fuse-box, then hastily driving him away because he thinks he needs a private conversation with Clara. Just a pity they went with the ‘You look like you have a lick of a tar brush about you, boy! Get out of my sight and don’t lay a filthy digit on my companion, you ugly jiggaboo!’ version instead.
Capaldi Coping Techniques:
Um… well, he didn’t write the script I suppose.
And it’s clear Gareth Roberts wasn’t impressed with Matt Smith’s replacement given lines like:
Clara: I hate you.
Doctor: That’s fine. That’s a perfectly normal reaction.
You know, come to think Roberts hasn’t written for Doctor Who again since this episode. Almost as though this series completely put him off the franchise. I know how he feels…
What Have You Achieved Today?
Doctor: I’ve set up a circle of time mines around the school. Chronodyne generators. I switch them on, the Blitzer gets sucked into a big old time vortex, billions of years into the future. It’s dead easy. Tiny bit boring. I’ll need a book and a sandwich.
Special Mention: For someone so desperate not to be identified with PE, Danny’s incredibly gymnastic skills – easily enough to get him into the Olympics – suggest he might actually be squandering his talents on teaching high school maths after all.
Conundrum
Of course no one is saying Steven Moffat is racist or Gareth Roberts or any of the characters in the episode. It is simply the irony of colour-blind casting that means that the stereotypical bad children happen to be black and that the guy dating Clara who the Doctor despises just happens to have that similar pigment. And undoubtedly the Doctor’s treatment of Danny – either down to him being black, a soldier or even just human – is thoroughly condemned by the plot for being unreasoning, destructive, pointless and hypocritical behavior.
But even so… no one watched the episode prior to broadcast and twigged it could be viewed as just a tad racist? That the Doctor’s behavior to Danny makes more sense to assume the Time Lord despises him for his skin colour than this bizarre soldier-hatred which no one today (or even at the time) understands? Why the hell write the Doctor having any irrational prejudice in the first place? Especially as, at the end of the episode, the Doctor’s still hating Danny anyway and hasn’t actually learned that he was wrong and should mend his ways?
It’s pretty damning that Steven Moffat has had to spend more time explaining why the Doctor acts this way than trying to sort out the timeline of River Song. Yes, the new Doctor is a jerk but such an inconsistent jerk viewers were genuinely left unsure if they were meant to condemn the character, agree with him or if it was a mystery to be explained at a later date (and anyone who expected that of a Moffat story arc was always going to be disappointed). For an anti-intolerance message to work people have to understand the intolerance in the first place and no one did.
And then, to add insult to injury, Moff decides to give Danny the surname “Pink” just to remind us what he isn’t. And then has his possibly-never-will-be-descendent meet the Doctor, so he can mention colour around the two guys before repeatedly telling a young black man he is incapable of any intellectual worth and should stick to sport. And then nicknames him “PE” to continually remind us of that awkward moment throughout the series. Seriously?
MOFF, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?!?
(And people wonder why this episode was screened after the watershed!)
Episode-Specific Survival Tip:If you’re wandering past a run-down derelict warehouse full of spooky shadows, lifelike mannequins, a bunch of strange sinister noises and flashes coming from it and you automatically assume it’s some kids skiving off school playing computer games? Leave it. Either it’s an alien death machine and you’ll evade certain death or it’s some kids playing truant and their poor life choices will be punishment enough.
Mr. Sparacus of Colchester’s Rant:
Childish, wafer-thin plotted trash just like The Sarah Jane Adventures. Boring to watch. All of the characters acting like children, especially the characters that were children. Let’s just call an ethnic minority a spade: you shouldn’t mix coloureds in laundry or real life. It’s the BBC political correctness agenda. 1/10.
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